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Robot for India's Moon Mission by IIT Kanpur
ISRO, Indian Space Research Organisation, is planning to send a robot for its mission to moon. It is probably going to be made by students and profs of IIT-Kanpur (the Indian equivalent of MIT). The two-legged robot, fitted with sophisticated sensors and high-resolution cameras, is capable of recording information and images using laser beams. It can also detect the distance of a hindrance, enter a small crater, bring surface samples and return high resolution images to the lunar vehicle. It balances cost and sophistication; basic functionality for only $50,000.
And grammar - how was such a poor submission accepted?
Why spend only whats needed, when you can spend 10x as much and make it sound more impressive?
Also some grammar checking by the editors would be nice. Still, I would assume that this article was submitted by a student at IIT-Kanpur, and English isn't their first language.
All that being said, it sounds like a really interesting project, not to mention really cheap. The article also says that they plan on making it into a four legged beast for stability, which sounds more reasonable than a two-legger. Bots are still getting the hang of walking on two pegs here in 1G, so designing one that will walk upright on the moon must be tougher.
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
The best thing about it only costing 50 grand is that it will be easier to send up a replacement when the cheap parts on the first one fsck up. Thanks for assuming the large amount of cash spent on space exploration is wasted, subby. Way to be a team player. When I leave this planet, I'm leaving you behind, kthxbi.
It seems fair to ask how much this off-the-shelf robotic technology owes to the "obscene" amounts of money invested by NASA and others in R&D over the last half-century.
Well, how much does it weigh? If a robot costing ten times as much weighs 10% less and does the same job, you've saved money. Getting there is the costly thing, compared to that design and construction is a trivial amount of money.
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
"Weather conditions in space are very different than on earth. So we have agreed that our robot to space will be a four-legged device for better navigation and convenience."
I hope all goes well, it would be great to see some cheaper solutions that work.
We can put a two-legged laser firing robot on the moon, but what are the chances it won't be able to spell ether?
[on .. Leonardo da Vinci] And he invented the helicopter... that did... not... work. And so did I! Yeah. Did not work.
The article says it will be four-legged.
With the difficulties making a walking robot here on earth, how do they plan on making its movements reliable? I see this thing tripping early in it's mission.
They better make sure to put one of those life line badges on it.
"I've fallen! And I can't get up!"FOXTROT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO
seems to me that makes an even stronger case for checking your spelling and grammar before posting.
It's simple economics. If you spend billions of dollars getting it there (they will), it's going to be worth it to spend more than $50,000 on it.
When critiquing the grammar and spelling, remember it's a Slashdot journal entry -- it's unlikely the author had any idea it was going to be seen by the entire Slashdot horde.
-- Old Man Kensey
It is a very nice project and hopefully, it will be successful. But there is no point in making comparisons until *after* the project has proven to be successful. How can one say that a project that has not succeeded yet was cheaper than another one that already passed with flying colors? This does not make sense.
As if. Unless somebody starts to get serious about cutting costs, you're not going to make enough money in your lifetime to afford to leave this planet.
That's $50,000 for a prototype robot that they wish could be used on the moon. It is not a production model, it is not slated to go to the moon, and there are no plans to send it to the moon. Ever.
According to the article, which you clearly failed to interpret: They have now have shown interest in our prototype. The organisation is seriously considering collaboration with us So, a couple folks have looked at it, and they conveyed that they found it interesting. If fact, someone at the instituion thinks the space agency is considering a (mere) collaboration. That's a far and distant cry from them delivering a space-capable robot.
Suddenly, this $50,000 student-built prototype robot seems like it could be a squandering of institutional funds, and that someone is trying to cover it up by pretending that it will go to the moon.
MIT: it's the IIT-Kanpur of the greater Boston area.
Really. If there is an Indian MIT, whey are there still Indians at MIT?
I suspect, however, that these cheap robots will not stand up to the rigors of space and dust.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
The Apollo missions got 47,900 kg to the moon for $2.75 billion in today's money. That's $57,411/kg. Let's say the Indians can do it vastly cheaper: $25,000/kg.
Let's say the robot weighs the same as Spirit and Opportunity (the current Mars rovers): 175kg. So the cost to get the robot to the moon would be $4,375,000, completely discounting the cost of the rocket itself, the payload container, the landing mechanism, support personnel, etc, etc.
Practical upshot: they could easily spend 10 times as much on the robot and only increase the cost of the mission 11%. And once the real costs are taken into account, the increase would probably be negligible ( 1%).
That's why NASA spends so much on the robot: a) it's incredibly expensive just to get the robot anywhere and b) if the robot screws up once it's there, the bulk of the money was completely wasted, so making the robot robust & reliable is very important.
When they're going somewhere other than the moon, let me know. That barren chunk of rock is a pointless waste of money IMHO. Unless you're going to build a lunar colony. So if they're starting that, then I'm all for it. Otherwise, you might as well spend the money it costs to get there on Big Macs. With cheese.
TLF
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Slashdot xenophobia alert.
A Two legged robot would be very difficult to get right and possibly very unreliable too. I hope they've taken into account the differing gravity of the moon in their gait algorithm.
The Mars Sojourner rover and landing system cost something like $65 million in hardware. Total development was $150 million. While the total project cost $280 million. Compared to the Viking missions of $3.5 billion each, adjusted for inflation, there is cause to show NASA is being conscience of costs nowadays. [Source:Wikipedia.org] Also, because the bulk of cost is R&D, launch and support, it makes no sense to cheap out on the hardware area in the final prototype.
Also, the trick is to land this thing. It took the Russians something like 12 tries before they managed to soft land a probe on the moon due largely to lack of processing power. Now thanks to rampant trillions of US military-industrial-complex spending anybody has the processing power necessary to land a probe on mars for pennies.
Slashdot "editors" do not "edit" posts. This makes Slashdot "more real" according to CmdrTaco.
o ld=0&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=14502339#145024 84
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=174297&thresh
Well, you know, I had to ask.
Seriously, googling I was not able to see if this thing is running on GNU Linux or even just the kernel.
fsck works on cheep and expensive storage devices it's really not hardware dependant.
NASA is a US government organization http://nasa.gov/. It's always going to be internally vulnerable to politics, budget cuts, but also shares one trait that plagues many government branches-inefficiency. As the Ansari X-prize demonstrated, NASA is good for some stuff concerning space flight, including doing key research that could not easily be done by private individuals, but at the same time, it is not a one-organization-fits-all solution.
Just because you get modded "insightful" on Slashdot doesn't mean you actually are in real life.
1. nuclear weapons
2. robots on the moon
3. installations of Internet connections in rural areas that do not even have schools.
Now, look at Japan. The Japanese made no significant effort in space exploration until after Japan became rich -- i.e., after the Japanese had a high standard of living. The Japanese did not care that they were "behind" the USA in space technology. What counted most (when your population is impoverished) is building the economy. Similar comments apply to Eastern Europe and other successful societies.
Now, look at India. The Indians basically destroyed their own society. They continue to destroy their society. While child prostitution is rampant in India due to horrific poverty, the Indians in the elite classes direct government to spend billions on building nuclear bombs and robots on the moon. Meanwhile, other Indian elites (like Vinod Khosla) take a hike to the USA.
Get a life, loser.
Have you ever seen a CD for only 1 penny, but Shipping & Handling was like 20 bucks?
That little robot may only cost 50K, but Shipping & Handling to the moon is going to require upping your credit limit into the millions.
As Carl Sagan used to say, it's not as if NASA is taking hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and launching the money into space. The money is spent and circulated right here on Earth. For example a large amount of expenses is spent on salaries for scientists, engineers, technicians (and yes it is also spent on salaries for annoying beaurocrats as well). All of those people in turn then spend the money to purchase homes, cars, groceries, college educations for their kids, vacations, etc... Some of the money spent by NASA also goes to universities in the form of research and project grants. A lot of the research that comes out of these NASA projects benefits humanity in more ways than one can really count. Also, spending money is not necessarily a "sin" or bad thing. Money is meant to be spent. Spending money benefits a nation in many ways. Spending money to explore the vastness of the cosmos and universe is one of the best things we can spend money on. If we don't spend money on exploration we are doomed to become trapped on an ever increasingly crowded and depleted planet, soon to become extinct as a species one way or another. Once we do gain cheap access to space, it's hard to imagine humans waging war and battling for a tiny strip of land when the entire universe suddenly becomes open to us. (But the only way the universe will become open is if we spend money now to build the technology and experiment and explore.) And finally... if you still think the money could be "spent to help the poor", consider that our civilization has more than enough money to spend on both the poor and space exploration. And if you think that money diverted from NASA will really go to the "poor" or "education" or something great like that, then you are naive in the ways of the world and the powers that be. Money diverted from NASA will go somewhere else and it won't be to the poor I can guarantee that.
it's better to wait till technology is sufficiently advanced and you get a spell-checker installed between your eyes
& brain. that way everyone gets along well!
Some of the arguments here raise genuine questions abt the viability of the project but there seem to quite a lot of them which are thinly veiled prejudiced comments... I was under the impression the geek community was more sensible and logical when it put forth its arguments...
Publicize: Submit this story to be posted to the Slashdot front page
Publish: Share this with other Slashdot users
Post: Pay no attention to my musings
Journal entries have 3 options, and Publish is the default selection, not Publicize.
So when will the bots on the moon demand equal rights?
I heard the robot also includes a built in vocoder. At this time however, its vocabulary is limited to "Welcome to QuikEMart" and "Thank you, come again."
If we can put a two-legged laser firing robot on the moon, why can't you take out the garbage when you're supposed to?
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
If these 50 grand robotic explorers can accomplish their mission then fine, NASA is should be ashamed.
Why? NASA had rovers on the Moon in the early 60s when a tiny computer was the size of a refrigerator. And they accomplished their missions.
If these 50K explorers are even successful (a big 'if') then they will only be 40 to 50 years behind NASA and Ruskosmos. Compare the cost of any brand new technology and the same technology 50 years later and you will find it will be dirt cheap. Mocking NASA like you and the author have done is really pathetic.
This article reminds me of the same hype we heard before the Europeans' Beagle 2 landed on Mars. What a bargin it was, how they would show NASA how it's done, etc. Except no signal was ever detected from Beagle 2, while Spirit and Opportunity are still going strong. Yea, they really showed NASA.
Mostly, the referenced article sounds like wishful thinking.
If we can do it here, they can do it there and cheaper. Thus goes "management think" and away will go even more technical jobs. My experience shows me that this is the way large companies think and where the big corporations go, the government usually follows. Sorry to be such a wet blanket right before memorial day, but it doesn't seem to me like offshoring is what my father and grandfather fought for in WW1 and WW2.
If I was deep this is would be profound, if smart then wise, if a poet then verse. Here it is, you judge!
but maybe you were just trying to be funny.
The moon is a preliminary step toward going anywhere else.
If we establish a moonbase vehicles will not need to re-enter earth atmosphere after their initial launch, thus eliminating the most dangerous and structually damaging aspects of any space mission.
You can retask, refurbish, completely reconfigure or whatever else you want to do without bearing the cost/risk of re-entry and subsequent relaunch. All of this work could be performed in a pressurized environment. The amount of information available through Google on permanent inflatable structures designed for moon use is fantastic. If you are interested you should also search 'micrometeorite protection.' There are some killer systems in development that could seal such a structure after penetration in fractions of a second.
Docking with a space station for any type of heavy duty work would be much riskier and would require EVA. One person/system/tool fucks up and the entire station could be compromised, not to mention that the astronauts would unable to maneuver with their legs, which is apparently one of the more challenging physical aspects of EVA.
A moonbase would also allow some food production to move off planet, which they have already shown can be done through experiments on both MIR and the current station.
With a moonbase a mission to anywhere else in the system becomes much easier as all you need to get out of the gravity well are crew and supplies. We can, and already are, revivng 50 year old rocket technology that does this cheaply and safely.
Finally, the moon does not rotate, it wobbles. This means that emergency back up systems could be stored out of the path of solar flare radiation using the mass of the moon as a shield. Not such a huge deal when the solar flare only takes out some private comm sats... but conventional scientific wisdom says that much larger flares can, and inevitably will occur. Add in the fact that a solar power system would have perpetual sunlight if positioned properly.
The moon is essential to getting us anywhere else in our solar system, and protecting our increasingly space dependent communication systems.
Regards.
Sorry but I am no big shot writer. I write what I think. Cant help it. English is not my mother tongue.
Amazingly
Brag later.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
That explains why NASA still needs 8088's to run the shuttle program.
Most education in India is carried out in English so regardless of first language anyone at IIT will probably be a better English speaker than the general Slashdot Reader. However that doesnt prevent people from making silly mistakes while typing fast on Slashdot. I mean the Slashdot entry is probably the least important portion of that persons day so lay off on the Grammar Nazism.
**Life is too short to be serious**
The 50K$ they are talking about is obviously for the prototype. The one they built already walks on 2 legs, the one they want to send "will be a four-legged device ". Plus the one built on the lab can always be made with off-the shelf parts, and TFA does not even attempt to say that the one they will send up will cost 50K$. Remember when NASA pushed the "cheaper, faster, better" program too far? It was crowned by the hugely successful Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander missions. Not to mention the European Beagle 2, other readers did that already. A space mission costs a lot because you get only one shot at it. And even if everything goes well and the vehicle achieves soft landing, it must survive long enough to produce useful data. Building radiation-tolerant equipment is not cheap.
Also some grammar checking by the editors would be nice.
Apparently they're outsourcing that: "Help us with feedback on Firehose items by selecting 'dupe', or 'typo' in the feedback menu below an item."
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
Entertainingly enough, even native English speakers can never get prepositions correct. A more correct translation follows.
/not a native English speaker
ISRO, [the] Indian Space Research Organization, is planning to send a robot [on a] mission to the moon. It is probably going to be made by students and profs. of IIT-Kanpur (for those who don't know, it's the Indian equivalent [of] MIT). The two-legged robot, fitted with sophisticated sensors and high-resolution cameras, is capable of recording information and images using laser beams. It can also detect the distance [to] a hindrance, enter a small crater, [and] bring surface samples and return high resolution images to the lunar vehicle. [] It seems to be pretty good. Although it needs some more sophistication, the cost of it is less than $50,000. Now [that's] a penny relative to the obscene amounts of money NASA spends every day. That [money] can be saved to make this world a whole lot better. Way to go ISRO.
Some of the sentences are incredibly tortured, but not incorrect per se.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Typical asshole thing to say. How many languages are you fluent in? Probably not even your mother tongue. 'Kudos' to the guy who wrote an article in a foreign language and had the cojones (that's BALLS to you, pal) to go so far as to make it public to the world, and 'Boo' to the hater. Loser. You were probably drunk, so it's okay.
I've fallen and I can't get up.
Freedom is strength, Ignorance is peace, War is slavery.
They'll have to give the phone tech the name of the person it's registered to, and then they'll be told to reboot the robot.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
I was criticising the EDITORS, not the submitter. Editors are SUPPOSED to be grammar Nazis.
I was going for pointing out the gross errors rather than a rewrite. I did it in about 1 minute, most of that fiddling with tags, if Taco had any respect for his readers that's all he needs to do.
Less entertainingly (to me), both my posts have been modded to -1 Troll, so it seems that lèse majesté is still an offence here.
Ah. I probably wouldn't have bothered to correct further, but the for/or thing really drives me insane.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Did you really expect any better from the Euro-trash and Turd Worlders? Their entire self-image revolves around mocking the US for not being just like them.
You can be sure that if NASA didn't exist, the very same pipsqueak malcontents would be slagging us for our self-centered, materialistic disregard for the wonders of space exploration.
These people are impossible to please and I don't know one reason why we should lift a finger to try.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
I edit for a living. It's hard to get all the errors on the first run through, especially when there are so many as this one. Best practice is to pass it to someone else with fresh eyes after the first round of corections have been made. If I'm doing it myself, I need to wait at least a few days before rereading.
For me the most fascinating part of the postings and replies is not the badly worded description of a student project that may or may not get off the ground in the near future, but the remarkable gullibility of the discussion that simply takes at face value what is said (and debated seriously). I travel to India frequently (in the software business) and it is clear there claims and boasts overreach somewhat. An example of this is the many companies that claim to have achieved CMM level 5 - when the truth is that the software they produce is average at best (and that with legions of testers) So I will prefer to wait until the $200K rocket lifts off and then lands on the moon with the $50K robot before I really get too excited about this.
The price of the Indian robot is offset by the fact that it is fueled by chicken vindaloo, which is a cheap inexhaustable source of energy, as well as burning stools.
May be he hoped the editors will do some correction? *ducks*
I propose a tag for this story: overhyped
For reference, I am an alumnus of IITK.
That's a very interesting number.
The NASA space power satellite (SPS) [nasa.gov] system was planned on a basis of $400/kg shipping cost. in the hopes that we might get to that price point someday. Shipping to synchronous orbit is quite a bit cheaper than shipping to the moon. Note that the URL is from the Wayback Machine. Since the Bush Administration killed the Solar Power Satellite program, it appears that they'd rather none of the rest of us were thinking about it.
Perhaps India's space agency should be looking at targets a lot closer to home.
Tech Public Policy stuff
One, though I'd say two more better than subby's english, but I wouldn't presume to submit to a site this big in a foreign language. Learning new languages is a fine thing, but the front page of slashdot is not the place to do it.
'Kudos' to the guy who wrote an article in a foreign language and had the cojones (that's BALLS to you, pal) to go so far as to make it public to the world
Why? It was painful to read.
I am trolling
IMO, you should have been moderated funny vs informative -- especially considering what this particular article looks like in my aggregator, NetNewsWire, which has the option of highlighting changes made to articles over time:
u 6.png :)
http://img174.imageshack.us/img174/3138/picture1y
Students and professors at another institution have developed an artificial heart for $20 using over-the-counter parts from Radio Shack.
They are currently soliciting for volunteers.
Russian launches are cheaper, more reliable, and safer than NASA's. Would your relatives prefer to see astronauts die because they refuse to use superior technology for the sole purpose of nationalist pride?
$50,000 is barely enough buy lubricant that can endure high vacuum
I really don't think that astronauts should be spending their brief time on the moon wacking off. That seems like a waste of taxpayer money.
ISRO with minimal funding(when compared to NASA or other space agencies) has achieved a lot. It has the capability to support all India's commercial and scientific needs through unmanned spaceflight alone, even with lots of scientific and economic sanctions it has achieved that. To believe that they can work with the budget they get is pure non sense one you see its track record over the years....its one of the top 3 space agencies in the world....so i don't think they wont think as much as you guys when planning for a mission on such a scale....
Maybe it was written by one of those top flight IIT engineers.
Lucky for them rocket science is a lot easier than composing coherent sentences using correctly spelled words.
So are we taking bets on the outcome of this venture?
Put me down for $100 on 'fail', and I'll bet another $100 on 'explodes on liftoff' if anybody will give me better than 2:1 odds.
Just post it to Slashdot. ...
We'll tear that shit up in one pass, have it fixed for you in under two minutes.
Kind of like this entire thread, thus far
You can be sure that if NASA didn't exist, the very same pipsqueak malcontents would be slagging us for our self-centered, materialistic disregard for the wonders of space exploration.
Amusingly NASA does exist but the majority still have a self-centered, materialistic disregard for the wonders of space exploration.--- Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity
I am not bashing NASA. Personally, I think that the these robots won't stand up to the rigors of space.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
The post forgets to mention that although it only has two legs, it has four arms.